Programming

I learnt this while I was at school, but I (mostly) didn't learn it in school. Programming is such a joy to me, and has given me tools that I've been able to apply to all sorts of things.

If you'd like to learn, you might want to try …

Late, and I'm not at all happy with the result. However, Bice has called me on it, so here it is. 
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• When Richard awoke, he was not in his bedroom, which was the customary place for him to rise. Nor was he in any bedroom that he recognized, although if …

I'm going to be brutally honest.  It's 9pm on a Sunday, I've just come in from the cold and the rain, I'm exhausted from four nights on the trot with little sleep and I'm in the middle of a good book.  I don't want to be sitting here and writing …

Disclaimer: I realize that by any sane judgment, my life is so amazingly free of problems that I might as well be cavorting about in the strawberry patches of Elysium, singing counterpoint with the Butterflies of Jubilation that accompany me always.  My own knowledge of real trouble, real suffering is …

It was the spring of 2009, and I'd just moved to London.  Which made it the autumn of 2009.  I had got a promotion at work.  No longer an engineer on Launchpad, I was now its Product Strategist, and thus was moving to the UK.

Moving to London was a …

I wish I had someone to blame other than myself for me being out in this miserable weather.  You would think by now that I would have the good sense not to hit Oxford Street during the January sales and the worst snow since America decided that it needed some …

A funny thing happened to me the other day.  I was sitting on my couch, waiting for an unusually long test run to complete and looking for something to keep me out of trouble when I glanced over at Jolie's motorcycle magazine.

Jolie doesn't normally read motorcycle magazines, or magazines …

Keen readers of Echo & Bounce will notice two things about the last two posts:

1. they were unusually close together
2. neither were about books I've just read

I think about ambition every now and then.  It's an important thing in my life and something I dearly wish I could better understand.  When I think about it, two people come to mind. Both are fictional, and both are drunks.

The first is from Macbeth. When we were studying …

I finished up 2012 with a vague intention to write more in 2013.  I asked folk on G+ what I could do to turn this vague intention into a more solid reality, and they did
did not disappoint.

Mary Gardiner made some great suggestions, starting with:

The usual: make a …

(Skip to the bottom for a tl;dr summary)

I read a lot.  Reading has always been one of the chief pleasures in my life, and anyone who has spent more than a half hour with me knows that I also rather enjoy talking about what I read.

In 2012 …

• Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
• The Lean Startup, Eric Reis
• Rome, Robert Hughes
• ggplot2, Hadley Wickham
• The Woman Who Died a Lot, Jasper Fforde
• The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2011 edition
• Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
• Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street, Warren Ellis …

I dumped my "things read" since August in my previous post.  Here are some thoughts about them.

The Apocalypse Codex
Lots of fun. Little brain required. Clearly did a fair chunk of research into what evangelical Christians actually believe & how they speak (although I've never in my long-legged life heard …

It's November already? Seriously?

• The Apocalypse Codex, Charles Stross
• The Citadel of the Autarch, Gene Wolfe
• David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman & Chris Riddell
• Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, Robert I. Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer
• Old Man's War, John Scalzi
• The Hollow …

I've had several non-fiction burdens in my "currently reading" list that I've decided to drop. Farewell "ggplot2", "Think Stats" and "Innovator's Solution". I won't miss you. Maybe I'll read you again when I care more urgently about data analysis and launching successful products. Still slogging through "7 Habits".

Have been …

When I started the year I had grand plans for my health and fitness. I don't do New Years Resolutions, but the Christmas break is a great time to review my goals and to set new ones. Sadly, I've made barely any progress toward any of these goals, and in …

Because I'm too lazy to figure out how to do a proper reading journal, I'm going to continue to inflict my recent reading on you all.

I took a break from the business books that I am supposed to be reading and got into some proper holiday fiction.

• The Life …

Our awesome wedding photographer, Kristian Leven, has published his highlight photos of our wedding. Take a look!

A couple of weeks ago, Joliette and I got married in the sight of God and men. The day itself is a happy blur in my head, full of smiling friends and family, wonderful food, great music, some very serious words and, of course, her.

Right now, I'm sitting in …